Fisheye lens for your SLR

[Bhautik Joshi’s] fisheye lens hack works well and looks OK too. It uses a door peephole from the hardware store as the fisheye and a slide projector lens to enlarge the image for proper sizing on the camera’s sensor. He included an EOS lens adapter so that it is easy to install and remove, then grabbed a soda can and some foam for the rest of the build. This will take those fun bendy pictures but don’t forget that you can correct for that in software if you wish.

This is cute for some cheap $60 camera or maybe a webcam, but the quality is such that using this on a DSLR is just an outrageous waste IMHO.
If this is what you use on a DSLR then maybe you should buy a cheap P&S and donate that DSLR to somebody that appreciates is is what I’m thinking right now.

@Whatnot: Wow, really? I mean, sure, it’s not a high-quality lens by any stretch of the imagination, but this is an art form we’re talking about…if you like the way the results look, then by definition it’s good enough, regardless of the technical merits.

@Marek: The Sigma 10-20mm is obviously a better solution…if you have $920 (MSRP) lying around…

@Orv I didn’t say it wasn’t good enough (for those into it) but that using a DSLR sensor for something that will have the exact same result when using a =>$50 camera seems such a damn silly ‘waste’, it’s like listening with a crystal earphone from the 30’s using some $2000 high quality amp as source.
Also when you have the resources to afford a DSLR then there must be a ‘cheap’ way to do this that gets substantially better quality for let’s say 2 or 3 times the money, which is still cheap but at least might make more sense.

Also on a more technical note, a small sensor might actually work way better with a peephole than the larger sensor of a DSLR, with a larger sensor you have to stretch the output too much.